Data Migration Utility

Transforming projects through effective data transfer

At a glance

Almost all major IT development projects need data to be transferred into a new system. Sentinel's Data Migration Utility streamlines this process, saving considerable time and reducing risks to successful project delivery.

Our Utility works with all data types, typically: Master Data (such as customers, suppliers, bills of materials) and Transaction Data (such as accounts receivable, open purchase orders and stock movements).

Why use the Sentinel Data Migration Utility?

Without a specialist Data Migration Utility, all migration processes need to be bespoke built. The time estimated for building these processes is typically underestimated and under-resourced, meaning processes are not stable or reliable enough until very late in the overall project timescales. This reduces the time available to test new systems on migrated data and poses additional risks to the project delivery.

The Sentinel Data Migration Utility addresses these key issues and provides the perfect mechanism to extract any data object types from any structured database or file, and then to validate and transform them using configurable rules. This allows the client to focus on the mechanisms for uploading the data to the new systems and also on the quality of the source data.

Key features and benefits

Configurable utility

Sentinel's Data Migration Utility can be easily configured to extract data from all structured database types (SQL Server, Oracle, JavaDB, MongoDB, Sybase, MySQL, DB2 etc) plus ERP systems such as SAP, Siebel with support for text files and XML.Once extracted data is in the Utility, transformation rules are applied to validate and transform it ready for loading on to the new system.

Improved data accuracy

Where data errors are found, the transformation rules can be refined and re-run as many times as required until the data is ready for upload. The transformation rules can also include automated cleansing logic to remove or replace incorrect data.

Reporting and data profiling

Once the data has been extracted into the Utility, any validation, transformation and load activities will automatically generate detailed reports showing data volumes and exception lists. These reports will support the data reconciliation requirements associated with any data migration process.

Safe testing

Wherever migrated data requirements exist, the industry best practice is to ensure that as many of the project test phases as possible are carried out using trial data. Sentinel's Data Migration Utility can work in conjunction with the Data Scrambling Utility to create realistic but anonymised test data. This ensures compliance with the Data Protection Act without compromising test objectives.